In conjunction with Mosaic Music Festival 2012, the Esplanade will be running a series of Mosaic Music Maker workshops designed for beginners or music enthusiasts!

Kiat and Max Lane will be running a workshop called Beats ‘n’ Bleeps: Digital Beats Production for Absolute Beginners.

During the 2-hour session, you will learn about the brief history and different styles of electronic music production techniques such as beatmaking looping, and get a chance to make a simple digital beats sequence from scratch.

Workshop Details

25 February 2012, Saturday
3:30pm and 6pm
Esplanade Rehearsal Studio
$20 – purchase your tickets for Beats ‘n’ Bleeps with Kiat and Max Lane via SISTIC

Check out other Mosaic Music Makers workshops by seasoned local musicians!

Come 13 January 2012, SKREAM & BENGA – two-thirds of electronic supergroup Magnetic Man, dubstep pioneers and kingpins of the UK bass scene – will make their debut performance in Singapore at ZIRCA.

Individually, the duo have both enjoyed incredible success. Benga & Coki’s ‘Night’ was undeniably the first dubstep ‘anthem’ and Skream’s remix of La Roux’s ‘In For The Kill’ has become one of the tracks of the decade – earning a 2011 Grammy nomination for ‘Best Dance Record’ and earning Skream a platinum disc for sales of over half a million copies. The track was also featured prominently in top US TV show ‘Entourage’.

Joining the spectacle of this landmark night are two of Singapore’s forward individuals representing the subliminal collective SYNDICATE – local bass purveyor KIAT and visual stalwart BRANDON TAY on live visuals.

Event Details:

13 January 2012, Friday
Zirca, Block 3C The Cannery, River Valley Road, Clarke Quay, #01-02 to 05 & #02-01 to 08
Before 11pm – $20 (incl 2 drinks)
After 11pm – $32 (incl 2 drinks)

RSVP for SKREAM & BENGA “Live” at Zirca on Facebook

It’s Christmas! And we’re giving away 1 x SPECIAL SYNDICATE 2012 ALL GIG PASS to one winner.

Yes, this special gig pass puts you on our personal guestlist for ALL our gigs next year, from Home Club to special audio-visual concert sessions to international gigs (flights/accommodation/personal expenses on your own).

To score this sweet prize, here’s what you’ll have to do:

1. Watch the video and look out for this glyph
2. Take a screen capture or photo of the video
3. Circle/point out the area where the glyph appears
4. Email the image to info@syndicate.sg

Entries close 25 December 2011 at 23:59:59.

Good luck!
Merry Xmas from the SYNDICATE crew.

Special Thanks To Simon Harsent for the photography and Blue Daisy for the track The End.

At the request of graphic design guru Neville Brody, artiste Ben Eine had done a piece called ANTI ANTI ANTI on the opposite wall of Mother London’s office. Mother liked the piece so much that they asked Ben to paint on their side of the alley wall and PRO PRO PRO was made.

We found out from Jacob, our friend in Mother, that this piece will actually be painted over soon. So while in London after our Worldwide Festival Sète 2011 performance, we decided to do a little projection bomb on it, under the drizzly London weather in the middle of the night, just for fun…much to the interest of random passing cars with booming systems.

Special Thanks to Mother UK (especially the very helpful studio man who helped us print our gig poster and the runner with the ladder on this rainy sunday night) as well as Jacob Wright and Supashen for their assistance and good vibes!

We wrap the year at Home Club with Blue Daisy for our final installment for 2011.

Kwesi Darko aka Blue Daisy has been a name fluttering about for a while. Finding his first breakthrough via bass heroine, Mary-Anne Hobbs, his music influences stem from everything such as hip hop to gospel, grime to dubstep, psyche rock to drone and many more. This wide spectrum of sounds can be heard in his recent debut LP release “The Sunday Gift”.

Residents Max Lane, Darren Dubwise and Trytoplay will keep the SYNDICATE program going with Kiat presenting a special live set with the collective’s songstress, Vandetta. The fourth Beat Invitational is also set to unearth more musical nuggets and gems all freshly made in Singapore with special guests from across the border.

Check event details after the jump.
 

Fresh from our visual vault for SYNDICATE SESSIONS at The Esplanade tomorrow! Buy your tickets online from Sistic today!

The one and only Strangeloop (Brainfeeder) has put together a Kickstarter project featuring an international collaboration with our very own Brandon Tay alongside Leigh J. McCloskey, Mono/Poly, Micah Nelson, Gavin Gamboa and Dan Miller.

Drawing on the extensive experience and surreal mind of respected artist Leigh J. McCloskey (artist behind the Flying Lotus’ crazy Cosmogramma album art!), the project will see Leigh providing the artwork and advising on the cultural aspects of the mythical civilizations of Anamnesia.

Micah Nelson, whom Brandon collaborated with for Austin Peralta & Thundercat’s set at Brainfeeder Sessions: LA vs SG will be designing the characters of Anamesia.

Mono/Poly (Brainfeeder) will be providing the musical score whilst Brandon Tay will be providing his EFX and compositing experience. To round up the team, Gavin Gamboa will be constructing the net narrative and Dan Miller will assist in colouring the scenes.

A truly exciting film project with a diverse group of visual artistes, we can’t wait to see the outcome of their heads together, so head over to Kickstarter to pledge your support for the Anamnesia film and lock down your copies of DVDs.

Anamnesia is an archetypal sci-fi myth conceived of by resident Brainfeeder audio-visualist [dr.] Strangeloop. In the future, a utopian civilization is driven mad by a mysterious imbalance in the fabric of space and time. As reality comes apart at the seams, Anam, mysteriously unaffected by his civilization’s schizophrenic break, journeys through vast unmapped territories looking for answers to aid his dying world.

You’ve seen him as the host for Beat Invitational and a couple months back, on his solo project as Trytoplay at SYNDICATE, debuting his live set and pretty much killin’ everyone in the process with his bad ass beats.

Producer for the ever so fun hip hop duo The Crazy88 and SYNDICATE’s newest crew will be heading up to the capital of Malaysia for a session of bouncy beats and infectious hooks.

If you are up in KL, head over to LAKE on 26 Nov! Don’t miss!

Get event details on Facebook.

P.S. Have you bought your tickets for the SYNDICATE Sessions this Friday, 25 Nov? They are running out fast, so don’t sleep. Get your SYNDICATE Sessions ticket on Sistic soon!

Asylum Store celebrated its 1st anniversary on 12 November 2011 and its parent AMNESTY commissioned SYNDICATE to design an audio-visual installation and tote bag.

Produced by our visual guru Brandon Tay, this piece is an investigation into the meaning of the term “The Floating World”. Traditionally a homonym for “sorrowful world” in kanji, the installation goes through several phases of representation – abstraction/nirvana,organic imagery/the physical world, landscape imagery/emotional states. Max Lane provided the accompanying apocalyptic soundtrack.

A mandala, a sigil, a symbol. Kiat sees his design for the limited edition tote bag as a mental re-programming device that allows us to restructure the minds of the masses through the commercial delivery system of retail and fashion. Through the hidden intentions in the design, world domination follows shortly via our Asylum agents.

We spent an afternoon DJing in-store with Darren Dubwise and Kiat sharing sound oddities as shoppers popped by the store to check out exclusive commemorative pieces by renowned labels Cor Sini Labe Doli, Nakkna and Rene Gurskov, and other limited edition bags contributed by Ivanho Harlim, Mojoko and Asylum!

Singapore’s elusive producer, Rora Realis, just dropped a single on Brooklyn’s Outlier Recordings which features a remix from our very own Max Lane. The release also includes remix contributions from the label’s founder Odd Logic, Australia’s Mirror State and another mysterious Singaporean producer, ddrff.

Do check out other quality releases from Outlier Recordings.